<h1>DefineMovieClip</h1>

<p>DefineMovieClip defines a movie clip that animates shapes within a movie. It contains an array of movie objects that define the placement of shapes, buttons, text and images and the order in which they are displayed through a time-line that is separate from the parent movie.</p>

<table>

<tr>
<th nowrap>Field Name</th>
<th>Type</th>
<th>Size</th>
<th>Description</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td nowrap valign="top">type</td>
<td nowrap valign="top">unsigned bit</td>
<td nowrap valign="top" align="right">10</td>
<td>Identifies the DefineMovieClip instruction when it is encoded. It is encoded 
with the length field as a 16-bit integer (Little-endian byte order).</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td nowrap valign="top">length</td>
<td nowrap valign="top">unsigned bit</td>
<td nowrap valign="top" align="right">6</td>
<td>The length in bytes of the body of the instruction when it is encoded. If the length is greater 
than 62 then this field is set to 0x3F and the length is encoded using the 
extendedLength field. Encoded with the type field as a 16-bit integer.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td nowrap valign="top">extendedLength</td>
<td nowrap valign="top">unsigned int</td>
<td nowrap valign="top" align="right">32</td>
<td>Optional. Contains the length in bytes of the encoded instruction if it is
greater than 62 bytes. If the length is 62 bytes or less then this field is 
omitted.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td nowrap valign="top">identifier</td>
<td nowrap valign="top">unsigned int</td>
<td nowrap valign="top" align="right">16</td>
<td>The unique identifier for this movie clip. This is used when adding or removing 
the shape from the display list or when the shape is used as part of another 
object such as a button.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td nowrap valign="top">frameCount</td>
<td nowrap valign="top">unsigned int</td>
<td nowrap valign="top" align="right">16</td>
<td>The number of frames in the movie clip.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td nowrap valign="top">objects</td>
<td nowrap valign="top">instruction[n]</td>
<td nowrap valign="top" align="right">&nbsp;</td>
<td>An array of instructions that are executed by the Flash Player to animate 
the movie clip.</td>
</tr>

</table>

<p>Although a movie clip contains the commands that instructs the Flash Player on how to animate the clip it cannot contain any new definitions of objects. All definitions must be in the main movie. All objects referred to by the movie clip must be also defined in the main movie before they can be used.</p>

<p>When using the DefineMovieClip object can only contain the following commands: 
ShowFrame, PlaceObject, PlaceObject2, RemoveObject, RemoveObject2, DoAction, StartSound, 
FrameLabel, SoundStreamHead, SoundStreamHead2 or SoundStreamBlock.</p>

<h2>History</h2>

<p>DefineMovieClip represents the DefineSprite tag from the Macromedia Flash (SWF) File Format Specification. It was introduced in Flash 3.</p>
